La llegada y Salamanca!

Hola a todos! Well I made it to Spain and so much has happened in the past few days that I think I have forgotten most of it, but I will try to give a brief summary of the things I do remember. We arrived at Barajas Airport in Madrid at 9:45 am on Thursday, February 4th after a fairly turbulent flight. Barajas is definitely the ugliest airport I have ever seen. The program coordinators met us at the airport-Esteban, el "jefe supremo" (who reminds me SO much of Rogelio, for those of you who know him), Eva, Encarní, y Maribel. We left the airport by bus and went straight to Ávila, a little town with some sort of old fortress and a famous saint (possibly Theresa). We were all very jetlagged and we only really stopped there for lunch, so we did not see much in this town. We got back on the bus and went to Salamanca, where we checked in at our hotel. I then experienced my first siesta. It was wonderful! I didn't want to wake up. Dinner that night was delicious, and we were serenaded by La Tuna, a traditional musical group from Spain. I took a video and once I figure out how to get it off my camera I will try to post it here. After dinner a bunch of us went out for a walk around Salamanca (by the way this is around midnight on a Thursday and the streets are still packed). We found our way to the Plaza Mayor (town center) and then proceeded to get hopelessly lost for about an hour and a half. Good thing one of us (not me) had some sense of direction and was able to steer us back to our hotel.

Friday, February 5
After a morning orientation session, we had a guided tour of Salamanca. We saw the cathedral, which was really neat because there were actually two cathedrals-the old one and the new one, built right next to each other. The old one was built first (duh), but after an earthquake destroyed a lot of it, the new one was rebuilt on top of/next to the old one. The style of this cathedral is fairly eclectic--it was a mix of many different styles of architecture, including gothic, baroque, renaissance, and a couple others that I was not familiar with. It was really hard to get a good picture of the outside of the cathedral, because it is legitimately right in the middle of the city. To see the contrast between the old and new cathedrals, look at the 2 pictures at the top of the entry (I tried to insert them here but for some reason they went to the top and I cannot move them). The one with the columns is the new one and the one with the paintings is the old one (that painting is from the 12th century or something and look at how well preserved it is!) After seeing the cathedral, we toured the Universidad de Salamanca-the oldest University in Spain. It was really cool to see. The first interesting thing that I remember is the way exams were conducted. If you passed your exams, you got to write your name on the building (on the outside!) and a symbol that said "VICTOR" to show that you were victorious in your studies. I really wish I had taken a picture of the names and the victor symbol because they were really neat. Another interesting thing about the Uni de Salamanca is that on the façade there is a sculpture of a toad (una rana) in between two skulls. Traditionally, if you see la rana and you are a student, it means that you will get good grades and be successful. Additionally, if you see la rana it means you will come back to Salamanca one day, and it may also mean that you will get married. I did not see la rana...so basically I'm going to fail and never come back to Salamanca and never get married. Que triste!

Well, I think that's all the interesting stuff I can remember for now. I was planning on updating this blog through today (the 6th) but there was just too much stuff to say and I am tired even though it is still early by Spanish standards. I will add more later. Goodnight.